By 18:00 the 4th Parachute Squadron RE was free to make its own withdrawal south across the railway line. Major Perkins’ HQ, No. 2 Troop and Lieutenant Thomas’ portion of No. 3 Troop therefore moved south to the Sonnenburg house on the Division perimeter around 500 yards west of the Hotel Hartenstein. They were mortared en route and on arrival were missing ten men, including Squadron Intelligence Officer Lieutenant George Harris and Squadron Sergeant-Major E. S. J. Marriott. Captain Brown’s half of No. 3 Troop had withdrawn from the livestock crossing on their own initiative, under the understandable assumption that their commander had been killed when the cart full of Hawkins mines exploded. On recovering consciousness Brown had actually been swept along in the general withdrawal in a dazed state and fetched up at Division HQ, where he was serendipitously reunited with his men. Staff officers then directed them to the north side of the solidifying Divisional perimeter held by Major Bernard Wilson and the 21st Independent Parachute Company. By 18:00 Brown had been personally guided by Wilson to a sector at the north-east corner of the perimeter just north of the latter’s HQ, a large house set in parkland called the Ommershof. The Sappers were busy digging in an hour later when they were joined by Captain Smith and No. 1 Troop accompanied by Squadron second-in-command Captain Nigel Thomas, who then assumed command of the entire RE contingent.170 According to Lieutenant Kenneth Evans from No. 1 Troop, Captain Thomas was unhappy with the Sapper’s allocated position on the very north-west corner of the perimeter because it was ‘an attrition position protecting the Independent Company’; on the other hand Captain Brown made no reference to any displeasure on Thomas’ part in his account of a conversation with the latter regarding the RE contingent’s dispositions.171
Possibly the most forlorn element of the withdrawal was the Polish 6-Pounder anti-tank gun commandeered by Captain Barron. The Poles appear to have been left to their own devices on the wrong side of the rail line, where they were joined by the badly wounded Bombardier Oprych. He had not been evacuated by the British medical orderlies as his friend Nosecki had assumed, and had spent two hours crawling across the landing zone before stumbling on his comrades in their gun pit. At dusk there was an exchange of fire with a self-propelled gun that appeared from the direction of the Wolfheze; given the location and timing it may have been a Flammpanzer B2 (f) from Panzer Kompanie 224 attached to SS Bataillon Eberwein. Whatever it was, the vehicle withdrew after the Poles scored two hits but not before destroying their Jeep with a near miss. With no way of moving their gun, no sign of further guidance or support and further German attack seemingly imminent, the crew decided to get out. After removing and hiding the 6-Pounder’s breechblock, the Polish gunners made their way over the railway line, carrying the unfortunate Oprych between them, and spent the remainder of the night dodging German patrols in the woods west of Oosterbeek.
Lieutenant Halpert’s remaining four Jeeps and two 6-Pounders enjoyed better luck, reaching the Hotel Hartenstein before being despatched north to join the other five Polish guns that had come in with the second lift the previous day. By dusk they were digging in alongside their comrades on the Oranjeweg, 300 yards north of Division HQ, where the crew of one gun became an object of considerable interest to Captain Thomas’ detachment from the 4th Parachute Squadron RE dug in nearby.172
By dusk on Tuesday 19 September the 4th Parachute Brigade’s effort to penetrate into Arnhem from the north had thus been fought to a standstill, although the British units ensconced in the city had no way of knowing it. Lieutenant Hugh Levien and his eleven-strong party from the 3rd Parachute Battalion’s B Company, which had taken shelter with Dutch civilians on the Bakkerstraat after becoming separated during the move into the bridge perimeter at dawn on Monday, had been obliged to surrender. At the central police station the fifteen members of No. 1 Section, 1st (Airborne) Divisional Provost Company remained in place under Sergeant Henry Callaway, accompanied by Private Robert Peatling from the 2nd Parachute Battalion and Sergeant Harry Parker from the 3rd. Despite being completely surrounded by large numbers of German troops, the Military Policemen remained undetected through the day despite shooting and wounding a lone German who attempted to climb the gate into the station yard, and after the prisoners in the cells broke a window and shouted unsuccessfully for help. The only other excitement appears to have been the arrival of two Dutch civilians laden with loot from adjoining shops; they were arrested briefly and then permitted to leave after promising to return with food. This relative calm ended when Sergeant Callaway and an unnamed companion climbed onto the station roof to monitor developments at around 16:00. For reasons that remain unclear one of the pair decided to fire on a nearby party of Germans with a Sten gun, prompting them to storm the police station half an hour later. Sergeant Callaway was killed in the ensuing fight in circumstances that are similarly unclear, with one participant reporting his death in the courtyard entrance, a second at the bottom of the station’s main staircase and another claiming he was shot after capture. However Callaway was killed, the rest of No. 1 Section were captured apart from Lance-Corporal Wally Whitmill, Sergeant Parker and Private Peatling. The Lance-Corporal and Sergeant managed to escape detection as the Germans cleared the building by hiding in separate locations and slipped away after dark. Peatling took shelter in the attic where he remained in hiding for forty-two days until discovered by Dutch policemen, one of whom delivered him to the Dutch Resistance where he remained until the end of the war.173
At the Arnhem road bridge the non-appearance of the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade on the polder south of the bridge was doubtless greeted with some relief by Major Gough, who had been tasked to storm across the bridge to meet them with his two Reconnaissance Squadron Jeeps and the 2nd Battalion’s Bren Carrier. The Poles’ absence appears to have remained unknown at Division HQ until Division HQ Signals attempted to establish contact with a No. 22 set tuned to the Polish Brigade’s command frequency at 18:02; unsurprisingly the Signals’ War Diary said no contact was made, and that subsequently they were informed by an unnamed source that the Polish Brigade’s drop had been cancelled.174
Tuesday afternoon also began relatively quietly for Private James Sims, safely ensconced in the Mortar Platoon house after his solitary night on the Weertjesstraat traffic island. Tasked by Sergeant Jackman to familiarise himself with the layout of the house and to make himself generally useful, Sims took the opportunity to pick over the rifled remnants of the house for souvenirs before taking post at an upstairs rear window where he overheard a clash with a German patrol, likely involving other elements of Support Company on the other side of the Prinsenhof: ‘I could only see out of the top of the window because a large wardrobe had been pulled in front of it. Down the side-road from which I had entered the garden, a battle was going on between airborne and German patrols. Shots, screams, the explosion of hand-grenades and the chattering of automatic weapons drifted up.’175 The growing shortage of ammunition meant risking moving in the open between buildings, and after being fortified with cherry brandy by Sergeant Smith, Sims found himself recovering an abandoned Bren gun from the traffic island. Both Sims and the gun made it back to safety but Smith’s disgust on seeing there was no magazine attached to it suggests he was more interested in ammunition than the weapon. Signalman George Lawson was also ordered to collect ammunition, in this instance from A Company HQ in the White House. Unable to locate Signalman Tony Wareham to assist as ordered, Lawson scrounged a handy shopping basket and raced across the empty street at a speed that ‘broke all Olympic records’. After collecting thirty loose rounds and being chivvied by Major Tatham-Warter he was brought up short on the return journey by ‘the clatter of boots. I had one up the spout ready if it was a German. But it was Tony and he bellowed out, “Why the hell didn’t you wait for me?” and we had an argument, under that bridge, “effing and blinding” at each other. We got that over and scarpered back to our post.’176
The pressure on the other side of the bridge ramp was more intense
and sustained, as the Germans pressed their advantage on the more isolated British units holding the east side of the perimeter. The 1st Parachute Squadron RE’s HQ element holding houses on the Eusebiusbuitensingel fought a three-hour battle during the morning with German infantry and three Panzer IIIs from Panzer Kompanie Mielke, supported by their fellow Sappers from A Troop and men from the 3rd Parachute Battalion’s C Company across the road in the Van Limburg Stirum School. The tanks withdrew after HQ Troop commander Lieutenant Donald Hindley scored a hit on one with a Gammon bomb, leaving their supporting infantry to take shelter in the adjacent house. Fifteen of them were killed by the School garrison whilst attempting to withdraw in small groups over the following hour-and-a-half, and at around midday the latter also eliminated a German mortar team to the north of the School, after patiently waiting for the enemy crew to finish setting up their weapon.177 Closer to the river sustained fire from other Panzer IIIs had obliged Lieutenant Andrew McDermont’s 3 Platoon to withdraw from their position on the corner of the Ooststraat and Westervoortsedijk with permission from Captain Tony Frank, but this was not well received by the 2nd Parachute Battalion’s newly installed commander: ‘Digby Tatham-Warter came walking calmly across from Battalion HQ with his brolly, quite unconcerned about any danger. He was very angry with me for letting McDermont’s platoon come back and ordered me to retake the house. I got McDermont’s platoon together – fifteen to twenty men only – and they set off from underneath the bridge, all very tired, just shrugging their shoulders and going back.’ Captain Frank chose to accompany the attack and the house was duly retaken, although Lieutenant McDermont was wounded in the stomach; Frank dosed him with morphine before evacuation and then took command of the house in time to rebuff a German counter-attack from along the bridge ramp that left four of the attackers dead. Lieutenant McDermont succumbed to his wound three days later.178
The mortar knocked out by the garrison of the Van Limburg School pointed to a shift in German tactics, presumably initiated by Brigadeführer Harmel. From around midday the British-occupied buildings were targeted in turn by German mortars, artillery and tanks in order to set them on fire before a return to the routine bombardment of the British pocket; the 1st Parachute Squadron recorded eleven direct hits on the Van Limburg School between 12:30 and 15:00, for example.179 The process had begun the previous afternoon, when the buildings on the riverside Rijnkade occupied by the 2nd Battalion’s MMG Platoon were shot up by German light flak guns deployed on the south bank of the Lower Rhine; the 20mm fire demolished the flimsier sections of the block and tracer ammunition set fire to what remained, obliging the Vickers teams to hastily evacuate.180 The Germans also renewed their effort to drive the 1st Parachute Squadron’s HQ element out of its foothold on the east side of the Eusebiusbuitensingel, and engaged the Van Limburg School with machine-guns infiltrated into the buildings opposite; the School garrison spent the afternoon identifying and eliminating them one by one. At 16:30 the Germans set light to the block of houses including that occupied by the Squadron HQ, but Lieutenant Hindley’s men managed to keep the flames at bay. By 17:00 the only building around the bridge not burning was the Van Limburg School, thanks partly to its isolation and partly to the efforts of a firefighting party stationed on the flat roof tasked to extinguish embers before they could take hold.181
Events took a double turn for the worse two hours later with the arrival of two Tiger I tanks from schwere Panzer Kompanie Hummel, the arrival of which was likely due to the influence of Feldmarschall Walther Model. The commander of Heeresgruppe B had been monitoring events at Arnhem closely, visiting Obersturmbannführer Harzer’s Division command post on the Heselbergherweg in the northern outskirts of Arnhem daily from 18 September; as this was only three kilometres north of the Arnhem road bridge he was likely also aware of the problems encountered by Brigadeführer Harmel in clearing Frost’s force from the northern end of the structure.182 The Kompanie’s fourteen Tiger tanks had entrained at its base in Paderborn around 08:00 and had to unload after twenty-four hours on the move at Bocholt, fifty miles short of Arnhem, owing to damage to the track ahead. Only two vehicles, commanded by a Leutnant Knaack and Feldwebel Barneki, managed to complete the subsequent road march without breaking down and were assigned to Kampfgruppe Brinkmann on arrival in Arnhem in the early evening.183
The two Tiger tanks approached the bridge ramp from the north at c. 19:00. According to the 1st Parachute Squadron War Diary, one drove onto the ramp, halted and began firing on the Van Limburg School with its main gun at thirty yards’ range. The high-velocity 88mm shells blew off the north-west corner of the building at first-floor level, and several passed straight through the structure.184 Sapper George Needham was on the staircase leading to the attic relaying information from an observing officer when the first shell struck: ‘Suddenly, there was a terrific explosion underneath this flight of stairs…We had been used to small-arms fire and mortaring, but it was absolutely stunning when this huge explosion took place. There was dust everywhere, and it took several seconds before I realized what had happened…It says a lot for the quality of Dutch building that the school didn’t collapse.’185 The subsequent movements of the Tigers are unclear. Private James Sims referred to Tiger tanks and supporting infantry moving onto the bridge proper ‘trying to bulldoze their way past the still-burning enemy armour blocking the road’; this may refer to the Tiger that shelled the Van Limburg School, although it is unclear how Sims could have seen this from his vantage point in the Mortar Platoon house on the Weertjesstraat.186 The vehicle’s movements for the reported thirty minutes they remained in action are unclear.187 One Tiger appears to have driven along the Eusebiusbuitensingel on the left of the ramp and shelled the block on the corner of the latter and the Westervoortsedijk occupied by a mixed group from the Division Signals Section and the RAOC Ordnance Field Parks detachment. Private Kevin Heaney was from the latter:
A shell came whooshing through the open bedroom window and hit the back of the house. The back wall became a pile of rubble, and the floor fell in. One of the signallers, resting on a bed in the back bedroom, came down with the floor and was trapped…his back was broken. Sergeant Mick Walker…climbed down to give him a morphine injection…We then took shelter in the cellar and started hoping for the best.188
The other Tiger was likely responsible for bringing the fight spectacularly into the relatively quiet western side of the bridge perimeter.
After his dash to recover the abandoned Bren gun Private Sims was assigned watch at one of the Mortar Platoon house’s upper front windows, which involved reclining on a nest of coats and sharing a box of chocolate liqueurs with an adjacent paratrooper. Initially the major distractions were chunks of burning roof timber crashing to the street below and a ‘wild eyed soldier’ who burst into the bedroom to warn of the fatal consequences of looting rosaries from the house, before disappearing equally suddenly; Sims’ veteran companion dismissed the self-appointed messenger as a ‘daft bastard’. A stream of tracer bullets then flayed the face of the White House on the opposite side of the Weertjesstraat, held by elements of A Company HQ and the 1st Parachute Squadron’s B Troop. Sims took this to be the Germans warning the occupants to evacuate, although it may merely have been a fire control measure to clarify the target in the smoke and dust. Whichever, the occupants responded with a burst of Bren fire and after a five-minute pause a large-calibre shell ‘hit a top storey near the roof and the entire building seemed to shake itself like a dog. We could plainly see the riflemen and airborne engineers, caution thrown to the winds, kneeling openly inside the blasted windows, pouring fire down at the Germans.’189 Sims refers to the shell coming from a self-propelled gun despite having no direct sight of the vehicle, although Corporal Horace Goodrich, a Bren gunner from 1st Parachute Brigade HQ also reported a narrow escape from that type of vehicle: ‘The enemy brought up a self-propelled gun to shell our building…After getting off two short bursts, I observed what had all the appearance of a golden
tennis ball at the mouth of the SP gun. The next moment I was lying on my back covered in dust and debris.’190 However, German-based accounts and photographic evidence only record the presence of SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 10’s light armour and Panzer III & IV tanks from Kompanie Mielke at the north end of the Arnhem road bridge and while it is perfectly possible that a self-propelled gun of some kind was present at this time, the evidence strongly suggests that one of Panzer Kompanie Hummel’s vehicles was responsible for shelling the White House; Frost, for example, refers to German heavy tanks being responsible for shelling the adjacent 2nd Battalion HQ building.191
The Tiger was therefore firing either down the length of the Eusebiusbinnensingel or more likely given subsequent events, under the bridge ramp from the Eusebiusbuitensingel. Wherever it came from, the second shell to strike the White House finished the matter, as witnessed by Private Sims:
We watched in horrified silence as the walls appeared to breathe out before the whole structure collapsed. The roof and floors fell inside and a towering column of flame shot into the sky. A cut-off scream marked the end of many gallant riflemen and engineers. The sudden collapse of such a solid-looking edifice was a terrific shock to our morale, and when...a stream of tracer lashed over our house…we all jumped to our feet and turned towards the door – only to find Sergeant Jackman standing there grinning at us.
Jackman, who had assumed command of the Mortar Platoon on the assumption that Lieutenant Woods had been killed in the White House, told Sergeant Maurice Kalikoff to choose six volunteers to hold the house before ordering the remainder out to dig slit trenches in the back garden. The move proved counter-productive for Sims, who was badly wounded in the left leg by a mortar bomb as he began digging.192 In the event, the evacuation of the Mortar Platoon house was also somewhat premature, for while the Tiger tanks had inflicted severe damage on the British positions, this was not all one way. By this point there appear to have been two serviceable 6-Pounder anti-tank guns in the bridge perimeter, Sergeant Robson’s on the Weertjesstraat and Sergeant O’Neill’s on the Eusebiusbinnensingel near the Brigade HQ building. One weapon was machine-gunned whilst attempting to engage the Tigers and it is unclear which gun was responsible for what followed, as Frost’s account suggests PIAT gunners may also have been involved.193 Leutnant Knaack’s Tiger was hit at least twice, once on the turret, which reportedly injured Knaack and his gunner and once through the muzzle brake of the 88mm gun, rendering it unserviceable; one source suggests the 6-Pounder was manned by an ad hoc crew made up of Major William Arnold, commander of the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery, Battery Captain Arvian Llewellyn-Jones, B Troop commander Lieutenant Philip MacFarlane and a Sergeant Colls.194 Whoever was responsible, the damage prompted both Tigers to withdraw, with Knaack’s vehicle then being sent back twenty-five miles to Doetinchem for workshop repair; Feldwebel Barneki’s Tiger was to return to the fray the following day.195
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